There was a thick almost sacred silence around Victoria. No fanfare, no roulette wheel, no pyrotechnics. Just the faint hum of the air conditioner cutting through the stillness of her private home on the Lyons family estate.
She stared at the Bombshell Roulette Championship laid across her coffee table like a devoted acolyte gazing upon their god. This was what they couldn't take from her. Try as they might her Sweet Rue was still polished and perfect as it lay in the glow of the dimly lit lamp.
They had been together for over three hundred days. A couple months shy of a year. The longest reign in the history of the Bombshell Roulette Division. All the battles, all the challengers, all the blood, and still this this was what they couldn't pry from her. The Bombshell Roulette Championship was her true constant.
But they still dare call someone else queen.
Her hand clenched into a tight fist, she scowled and her lip quivered. It was like she could smell the fire. Smoke and burning velvet, the splintering wood from her throne being engulfed in flames during her war with Alexandra Calaway. The one they now called queen.
The Queen for a day.
She exhaled, and a laugh almost escaped her lips as she unclenched her fist. It was a cute game Alexandra was playing. Win a match ,take the crown and now she gets to play god with the SCW roster for twenty-four hour. Of course she calls upon Victoria. The now deposed queen.
She didn't do it to elevate the division, or because she felt it was best for business. She wanted to poke the lioness. Victoria knew why. It was because deep down Alexandra knew the truth that Victoria wasn't just a queen, and she wasn't just a champion, she was a force of nature caged by the illusion of civility.
Alexandra can have her day. She could prance around feeding matches into the SCW engine like they were offerings to Alexandra's own vanity.
Alexandra burned the throne and they gave her the crown. But she didn't kill the queen, she only awoke something worse.
Her eyes drifted back down to her Sweet Rue. She reached out and ran her fingertips across it in a gentle, maternal fashion. Rue was the thing that still made sense to her in a world that kept lying pretending she lost something.
She had lost nothing. She had transcended.
She wore the crown for a year because she was worthy of doing so, and her lengthy record-breaking reign as Bombshell Roulette Champion proved it.
Maybe it was time for her to ascend.
Maybe she was ready to be more than a queen.
Maybe she was ready to become a goddess.
She could feel some laughter bubbling up, twisted by something underneath, it felt pleasing as it pushed up and escaped her lips.
She would play this new Queen's game, and she would welcome Frankie Holliday to the big leagues of SCW.
Frankie Holliday, a new toy brought in from the void and the winner of the Bombshell Blast from the Past tournament. The future challenger to Kayla Richards and the Bombshell World Championship. It would seem SCW is already anointing her as a golden girl in the making, or perhaps another sacrifice.
She wasn't angry at Frankie. She had no reason to be, in fact she was rather intrigued. There was there was something about Frankie and and the aura surrounding her. Victoria could recognize it.
Frankie wasn't someone who screamed naive like that wide-eyed hopeful little girl named Harper Mason. There was something older in Frankie's eyes something that told Victoria she had seen things. What those things may be Victoria couldn't tell but it was enough for her to know that Frankie was not to be treated like a child wandering into the lion's den.
That meant Frankie would get the real thing. The weight of everything Victoria had become, the queen for a year, the record-breaker, one of the most dominant bombshells SCW had to offer, wether they liked it or not.
Frankie had done well to win the blast from the past tournament. Victoria couldn’t deny that, but she had been playing with children. Now it was time for Victoria to test to see if Frankie really was ready to play with the big girls. She didn’t have to like Kayla Richards to know what the Bombshell World Champion was capable of. Victoria knew the simple truth, while the entire division had varying degrees of talent, two names always seemed to rise above the rest. Victoria Lyons, and Kayla Richards.
So it was to be a royal street fight. Victoria imagined Alexandra thought she was real clever with that one. Another jab, another reminder that the crown that wasn’t Victoria's anymore, but that was fine. Alexandra could lace it all in symbolism and watch the chaos from her temporary perch and smile. Victoria would smile back at her eternal rival, as she killed the momentum of her chosen hitwoman.
Frankie Holliday would be burned into memory, not because she hated Frankie but because it was time to remind everyone especially Alexandra Calaway that Victoria Lyons doesn't need a throne, and that she builds empires out of ashes.
She reached out and pulled her Sweet Rue off the table and held it to her chest like a mother embracing her child. She stood and walked over to the window looking at the world outside.
She had been queen for a year whether they liked it or not. They can throw around that it was only supposed to last a day all they want, but deep in their tiny little hearts they knew the truth. That nobody could wear the crown like she did. She made that shit look good, and she made it mean something. Now they all seemed pleased to relegate it back to a mere prop, after all she did to elevate the crown. It was disgraceful.
But now, Victoria was ready to become something else. Something untouchable, something eternal.
She was ready to ascend to goddess. The game would continue but it would be Victoria who would write the rules.[/i]
__________
The cameras open on blackness, but there's a low faint sound like a choir humming a funeral dirge in reverse and then the two golden slivers of Victoria Lyons eyes appear among the darkness as she speaks with a silky venom in her voice.
“A revolution requires sacrifice..” she said “That's what you said, isn't it Frankie? And you're absolutely right because now you are the sacrifice.”
From the darkness she fully emerges confident smirk on her face. Bombshell Roulette Championship probably displayed on her shoulder. But now she is crownless, deposed by the higher authorities.
“It's not because you're unworthy. Oh no no no.” she said “You're talented, impressive even. I watched the whole Blast from the Past play out like a violent fairy tale, and you became a rising star born in a ring of fire, screaming truth into a void filled with rotted egos.”
With a smirk she nodded slightly at the camera.
“You spoke the truth to Mikah.” she continued “You spat in the face of manufactured royalty, and has someone who earned their crown and earned the right to call themselves queen, I loved it."
She pauses her aura becoming more sinister.
“But now..” she grins “Now the real test begins, because you're not checking off faded names for a highlight reel, oh no Frankie you're in the deep end now. You're not playing with the children anymore, you're stepping into the ring with me, so perhaps we should get properly acquainted."
She extends her hand out offering a handshake to the camera.
“My name is Victoria Lyons the current and longest reigning Bombshell Roulette Champion of all time and my career only started a year ago.” she said “I fought and I bled, and I smiled the entire time. I came in and I ripped this championship away from our little matchmaker Alexandra Calaway, our Queen for a Day. Let that sink in for a minute Frankie.”
Victoria paused keeping her gaze on the camera.
“She chose you.” Victoria continued “She chose you to fight me. But if you really think it's about showcasing you Frankie my dear, it's not.”
She paused shortly for a moment.
“She's using you.” Victoria said “She's parading you around like a shiny new toy hoping you'll play hit woman for her and be her pawn. Her chance to vicariously take another bite out of me. She's tried to take this championship back but she couldn't. She stole and burned my throne. My property, and now she's being rewarded with my crown. The one I wore for an entire year. She's just hoping you can get the job done for her. How does that make you feel? To know you’re just being used?”
She shakes her head slightly.
“I was proud to call myself Queen.” she continued “I wore that crown with pride and righteousness like it meant something. But now I see the truth. Queens fall and kingdom's crumble. But Goddesses? We endure.”
A confident but delusional smile grows on her face.
“You made your way through the blast from the past tournament with fire and force and declared yourself the future. That's something to be respected.” said Victoria “But you have to realize I'm what comes after the future. I am what remains.”
She pauses again for a beat as a fog creeps around her through the darkness almost shrouding her in its grasp.
“Don't go mistaking my respect for softness Frankie.” [/color]said Victoria “I do see something in you something sharp unsettling and familiar, the kind of recklessness that can't be taught and perhaps if the stars find another way in another time line I'd have taken you under my wing.”
She exhales softly
“Unfortunately you've been placed in my path and I have a point to prove.” said Victoria. “You have a lot of momentum behind you after winning the tournament, but momentum has a way of making you feel like you're meant for more. That nothing can stop you. You will face Kayla Richards. That can’t be taken from you, you earned that. But I'm here to kill your momentum.”
She smirks at the camera.
“So when you stumble into your match with Kayla, broken and unsure and the ghost of our match crawls down your spine and whispers at you that perhaps you're not good enough just as you're about to deliver the kill shot, you'll realize what I've done to you, and you'll realize that I'm no ordinary bombshell, I am an infection.” she continued
She laughed herself the smirk not wavering.
“I get inside your mind and rest behind your eyes.” said Victoria “Alexandra Calaway knows that. That's why she sent you, she wants me wounded. You're being used to settle an old score she's praying you can be the one to break me.”
Victoria takes a few steps slowly through the fog toward the camera.
“So no. This match is not going to be your next big moment Frankie.” said Victoria
“This is going to be your crucifixion. I promise you when that bell rings you'll be standing across from everything I used to be, everything they burned to the ground, and everything I'm becoming all at once.”
She continues her slow step toward the camera the fog thickening around her.
“This isn’t about retribution, or about gold, it's not even about Alexandra.” said Victoria “It's about evolution. My evolution, my rise from Queen to Goddess. You said you seek a revolution Frankie, but the thing about revolutions is they always start in blood and my dear yours is going to be the first to spill.”
The fog continues to thicken around her almost engulfing her completely her sinister gauge remaining on the camera and tell everything is completely shrouded in fog in the scene fades out to black.
_________
The old Greenhouse was forgotten not just neglected but forgotten over time buried on the Eastern edge of the Lions Family Estate like some secret they all agreed not to remember.
Nobody visited anymore no one spoke of it the path had become overgrown under weeds and Moss and it was only by Instinct that Victoria even founded again Guided by something more than just memory something woven into the bones of her being.
She felt like a trespasser has she stepped into the threshold the glass above had mostly shattered and Vines curled in from every corner like fingers reaching flying and consuming. The air was thick and damp with the scent of soil in old wood over something that was once beautiful and had now turned Wild.
The three of them used to play here once years ago her Vincent and Eddie. It had been so long that it felt like a different life but she remembered the sun flooding through the clean planes in the laughter that echoed throughout the high Dome ceiling like music back when the world felt huge and she didn't know yet what it meant to bleed for power.
Another world felt smaller sharper and hungrier. Fallen Twigs cracked beneath her boots has she moved deeper in to a rusted fountain in the center of the room empty and covered in Moss a spider had built its own Empire where water once rested.
Victoria smiled at the little spider empire.
She ran her fingers against the dry basin everything in here everything they had once planted had been left to choke or change it had become a tomb.
No… not a tomb this was a womb, a place where things were reborn. A carving in the Basin caught her eyes.
V.L.
V.L.J.
E.L.
The three of them had no idea what they would become she stared at they carved initials when the creek of old wood reached her ears. Without looking she knew who it was.
Vincent.
“I thought this place was gone.” he said approaching her.
“Not gone.” Victoria said softly “Just forgotten.”
She watched Vincent looked around the old Greenhouse.
“We used to call it the temple.” she said.
“I remember.” nodded Vincent.
They stood there in silence, Victoria letting her gaze wander. The old orchids were long dead, the roses had become brambles and the lilies were no more than ghosts. But even in the decay there was life, small green shoots pierced through the dead foliage here and there and moss bloomed like velvet on the stones.
“I don't think anyone's been here since we were kids.” said Vincent.
“Yeah I suppose no one had reason to” said Victoria “But I do now.”
“Why now?” asked Vincent eyebrow raised.
“I needed to see what happened to things that are left behind.” Victoria said “You know I used to think beauty meant something, that if you tended it long enough and gave it care it would reward you and it would stay.”
She wandered over and kneeled next to a rotted red planter box running her fingers over the brittle pieces of what could have been something beautiful.
“But it doesn't stay.” she said “It just waits for time, for rot, for someone to come back and see the truth.”
“And what's the truth?” asked Vincent.
“That nothing grows until something else dies.” she said turning to him “That's why Alexandra thinks she's won. She burned the throne. MY throne. She thinks burning my throne and carrying the crown means she's won. but all she did was make room for something worse.”
“So what happens next?” asked Vincent.
“I go out and I beat Frankie Holliday.” Victoria said simply “I remind everyone that crown, or no crown I am still one of the most feared and dominant Bombshells in SCW. I beat Frankie not because she deserves to lose, but because of the future wants to forget about people like me and I refuse to be forgotten.”
They stayed there a while longer surrounded by the ghosts of their childhood listening to the quiet they could both still see it, the kids they used to be running in circles through the wild green, Eddie may have taken his own road, but The Lyons Twins were still ready to burn kingdoms to the ground together.
__________
The cameras open at nightfall in the long abandoned Lyons family greenhouse, a single chair rests, surrounded by candles as Victoria Lyons sits with the Bombshell Roulette Championship displayed proudly on her shoulder.
The camera rests and she remains silent for a moment plucking a piece of ivy from the side of a broken pane.
“Funny how people always think they're in charge of their own story.” Victoria said with a soft but venomous tone “You win Blast from the Past get your hand raised, the confetti in the air, and you think you're the master of your own fate.”
She looks up to the camera with a sharp expression.
“But if you were really in control Frankie you wouldn't be facing me next would you?” Victoria said “You earned your shot at Kayla Richards fair and square, but before you can go after your prize you've been handed a detour, you've been pointed at me.”
A slow unamused smile unfurls on her face.
“And I want you to ask yourself one important question.” she said “Who benefits from that?”
She lets the question linger among the silence for a moment.
“It's not you, it's not me, and it's not Kayla Richards.” said Victoria ”It's Alexandra Calaway. She's got you doing her dirty work Frankie. She's the one playing general while you play soldier. You're the one being sent into the lion's den to try and soften me up. ”
She smirks and a quick laugh exit her lips.
“You didn't ask for this fight and you didn't need it.” said Victoria “But she booked it, not to honor your success but to weaponize it. You're a hitwoman Frankie, a bullet she's loading into the chamber and the second you misfire she'll pretend you were never even in the gun.”
She rises to her feet standing with poise and confidence.
“The truth is this division is full of jealous catty bitches.” said Victoria “They all want to believe they’re the heroine, the savior, but the truth is this division isn't some sort of fairytale. It's a graveyard of women who couldn't keep up with me.”
Her voice tightens becoming more lethal in tone.
“Selfish, jealous, and cutthroat.” she said “That's what this division is built on. The women who never gave me the credit I earned because I said the things they were too scared to admit. Because I refuse to play nice and I won't fake a smile for the camera and play their little politics.”
She takes a few steps closer to the camera.
“You're not just walking into a fight with me.” said Victoria “You're walking into a mirror and it's going to show you exactly what happens when you try to survive in a place that feeds on women like you.”
She pauses staring straight into the lens.
“You can't just beat Kayla Richards.” she said “Kayla is more venom than blood, and if you want her championship you're going to need something darker than determination. Something cold, something lethal.”
She pauses gracing her fingers slowly across her championship belt.
“I'm not here to break you Frankie.” said Victoria “I'm here to wake you up. I'm the only one in this division who will tell you the truth even when it cuts deep.”
She moves again taking a few steps forward almost too close.
“You're strong, you're proud, and you clawed your way through blast from the past to get here.” said Victoria “But if you want to stay here, if you want to leave a legacy that lasts you need to start moving like a threat.”
She pauses for a beat.
“Don't let people like Alexandra use you.” said Victoria “Don't let the division chew you up and spit out the parts that don't smile on cue. If you want Kayla's blood, you need to stop letting other people sharpen the knife.”
She exhales softly.
“You're walking into a den of liars.” said Victoria “But Frankie, I'm not one of them. I'm the only one who will tell you what the others are too scared to admit. I'm not looking for your friendship. I'm just giving you some friendly advice on how to survive around here. I just want to open your eyes to what the SCW Bombshell division really is. At the end of the day the choices you make will be yours alone but you really should…”
She pauses with a slow smug smile for me on her face.
“Trust me.”
Keeping the expression on her face she winks at the camera has everything fades out to black.
